IS THE VOICE OF FRANCE BECOME INAUDIBLE

ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE ?

And wouldn't its primary objective be above all to restore the lost greatness of France ?

A diplomatic ballet in Paris

The list of objectives was as long as the hopes of success were slim. This was the sentiment expressed by the foreign press on November 9, while the International Humanitarian Conference for the civilian population of Gaza took place in Paris, followed by the Annual Peace Forum from November 11, 2023.

The Head of State is inaugurating this Friday, November 11, 2023, the 6th edition of the Paris Peace Forum at the Palais Brongniart, dedicated this year to “building together in a world of rivalries”.

It will also close the One Planet summit on the poles and glaciers at the National Museum of Natural History, after similar meetings on the oceans in Brest and forests in Gabon.

Two linked, "connected" meetings, which are part of the "same logic of preparing international cooperation to avoid the crises of tomorrow and create more common goods", according to the term of the Élysée upstream of the sequence .

To conclude this diplomatic week, Macron will chair the 5th summit of the Christchurch Call, an initiative launched with New Zealand after the 2019 attack, aimed at combating terrorist content online. A new opportunity for the president to show initiative and affirm the strength of unity.

And to affirm that we are always stronger together. This is the vision of the President of the Republic, champion of multilateralism on the international scene.

Multilateralism in the spotlight

According to the Élysée, the Paris Forum manages to maintain multilateralism despite tensions and conflicts, by cooperating on subjects where collaboration is essential."

What we manage to do at the Paris Forum is that despite the tensions and despite the wars, we continue to bring multilateralism to life on subjects where we have no choice but to cooperate", explains today today the presidency to journalists

However, diplomatic hyperactivity in Paris raises concerns among correspondents, who fear that messages will be diluted in the multitude of summits.

Politico highlights Emmanuel Macron's impressive to-do list this week, from resolving the crisis in Gaza to tackling melting ice caps and the challenges of artificial intelligence.

A “humanitarian conference” at the initiative of Emmanuel Macron

France hosted on Thursday November 10, 2023 a “humanitarian conference” at the initiative of President Emmanuel Macron to facilitate aid to Gaza, hampered by Israeli bombings since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

After more than a month of strikes, hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to the UN, remain trapped in the north of the Gaza Strip, an area of ​​intense Israeli offensive.

Around 1.5 million people of Gaza's 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the conflict.

Emmanuel Macron stressed the need to work to protect civilians, calling for a rapid humanitarian pause and a ceasefire. He insisted on Israel's right to defend itself while emphasizing its responsibility to protect civilians.

“It is the protection of civilians that we must work on. For this we need a very rapid humanitarian pause and we must work for a ceasefire,” declared Emmanuel Macron in front of representatives of around fifty of countries and humanitarian organizations, which had until then only mentioned the need for a "truce".

If Israel has "the right to defend itself and the duty to protect its own", its government also has "an eminent responsibility (...) to respect the law and protect civilians", insisted the French president.

Paris also considers a truce necessary to obtain the release of some 240 hostages held by Hamas, including some French people.

At the end of the conference, the organizers announced that the commitments made yesterday by the participating countries exceeded one billion euros.

The disappointment of the NGOs

According to the White House, Israel has agreed to daily four-hour breaks. At the end of the conference, commitments from participating countries exceeded one billion euros.

However, the conference, organized as an emergency, mainly brought together only second-rate representatives in the absence of the Israeli government, and it took place without the participation of the belligerents and the United States.

Furthermore, despite financial commitments, much of the aid intended for the Palestinian territories, estimated at $1.2 billion by the end of 2023, risks being ineffective without regular access of aid trucks to Gaza. .

Humanitarian organizations have expressed their disappointment, stressing the impossibility of intervening as long as the bombings continue."

We are quite disappointed because there was no consensus on an immediate ceasefire (…).

Beyond the mobilized aid, the challenge is to get it back to Gaza,” said Jean-François Corty, vice-president of Médecins du Monde. Setting up relief on the battlefield is impossible.”

End of inadmissibility from Biden and Netanyahu

As if in response to these calls, the White House affirmed that Israel agreed to "daily" four-hour breaks in certain areas of the north "of the Gaza Strip, but US President Joe Biden ruled that there was “no possibility” of a real ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consistently rules out such a ceasefire without the release of the hostages.

An Israeli military official said Thursday that "there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip," while acknowledging the "many difficulties" facing civilians in the Palestinian territory gripped by Israel's war. and Hamas. Israel "facilitates the delivery of humanitarian aid," said Colonel Moshe Tetro, head for Gaza of the Israeli Defense Ministry body overseeing civilian activities in the Palestinian Territories.

However, US President Joe Biden ruled that a real cessation of hostilities was impossible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rules out a ceasefire without the release of the hostages. An Israeli military official has denied the existence of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The voice of France become inaudible ?

Israel and the United States may have differences on the strategic priorities of this war, but they are at least united in quickly dismissing their French counterpart. Emmanuel Macreon's desire to exist internationally through some show of brilliance falls like a bellows.

This is evidenced by the reception of several initiatives recently launched by the President of the Republic, and the small fallout from his trip to the Middle East.

His idea, put forward from Jerusalem, of an international coalition against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, behind the bloody attacks against Israel, has not aroused the enthusiasm of other Western capitals, far from it. It was rather mocked by experts considering it extremely complex to implement.

Just like the deployment of the ship “Tonnerre” off the coast of the Gaza Strip, announced this time in Cairo in Egypt to “support the hospitals there”.

The ship has arrived in the area, but it is still not receiving any wounded and its operations there are complicated by the blockade imposed by Israel.

These actions were met with skepticism, raising questions about France's ability to embody a respected and listened to diplomatic voice.

And to speak of a big diplomatic gap : "how can he be followed when in Israel, on October 24, he proposed - without warning anyone - to mobilize the international coalition against the Islamic State this time to "fight against Hamas" , then asks to “work towards a ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip this Thursday, November 9, 2023?

In other words, how can he go in 17 days from the idea of ​​intervening mainly by air in Gaza with the added bonus of support from Arab countries (which is what "the coalition against Daesh" was doing) to the completely opposite objective of a ceasefire in the same place? ", we read from the pen of Maurice Bontinck in La Charente libre.

"But this great diplomatic gap carried out on a thread demonstrates that Emmanuel Macron thinks first of his country and of preserving its already well-divided unity. By blowing hot and cold with sometimes contrary ideas, he also embodies the tensions politicians who are found even in its own majority.

But above all he embodies French divisions. We can still see it in his hesitation to demonstrate on Sunday against anti-Semitism. ", concludes the editorialist.